PADULA: Reflecting on legal recreational cannabis, one month later

By Gregg Padula Columnist

Thursday

Jul 26, 2018 at 11:31 AM

Here we are. It has been one month since the state entered the brave new world of legalized cannabis. If you put your ear to the ground, you won’t even hear a murmur. No dancing in the streets or any other celebration.

Sure, cannabis is now legal, with just one big hurdle -- there are no legal establishments open for business and no concrete timeframe for when they will open. Many, including myself, feel as though the structure on which our cannabis industry is built upon was constructed in quicksand. Why are we still stuck in the same place? Why is this taking so long?

There are a number of identifiable reasons why we are still here, speaking of a hypothetical industry instead of reflecting on a month’s worth of commerce, including deep-rooted beliefs, misinformation and local communities organizing to oppose shops in their towns.

The Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) started accepting applications for recreational cannabis licenses on June 1, and given the program’s early stumbling, the only way a retail cannabis shop could have opened on July 1 is if it were due to a clerical error.

We have seen some progress in the past couple weeks, with the CCC issuing five retail cannabis licenses to two companies -- Cultivate and Milford-based Sira Naturals.

Sira Naturals is one of the more-established medical dispensaries and has opted to shift its focus to the consumer market. Sira currently has two medical dispensaries -- Somerville and Cambridge. All cultivation is done in Milford. Since Sira was only awarded a “license to cultivate cannabis for recreational use” at its Milford location, it must now go through the zoning processes in Somerville and Cambridge in order to sell legally grown cannabis in the places where it has been operating medical dispensaries.

It’s a backwards system, from the inside out. Once zoning is settled, the company will receive a local permit, allowing it to advance to the next step -- applying for state adult-use retail licenses.

In my opinion, the hardest blows to an already-fractured system have come from the resistance of communities unwilling to allow retail shops. Even more disconcerting is many of those opposed to it seem to be incredibly misinformed. I have spoken to everyone from Reefer Madness-types to vigilantly pro-cannabis activists and everyone in between -- and believe me, there are many “in-betweens.” These individuals are typically happy to banter back and forth and aren’t anti-cannabis. They’re just confused like everyone else and feel it’s being pushed on them.

Almost 200 communities and counting have banned recreational cannabis and continue to hold moratoriums on allowing retail cannabis shops to operate within their borders. And now, just in time to make matters worse, Attorney General Maura Healey ruled that the moratoriums created to give communities time to set up local regulations and zoning can be extended through June 2019.

Two absolutely vital areas that are further complicating the chances of seeing any shops soon are banking and laboratory testing.

As of yet, not a single bank has agreed to provide financial services to companies involved in selling cannabis for recreational use. This forces businesses to deal with cash only. So, now we’re creating a potential hotbed for robberies and unregulated cash flow. Some suggest the industry adopt bitcoin or other untraceable cryptocurrencies as the official cannabis currency.

Last but not least, one of my biggest concerns are testing laboratories. Massachusetts law requires all retail cannabis be tested by independent laboratories, such as MCR in Framingham, one of the three labs to open in 2015. Even though they have been testing cannabis for three years, they must now acquire a separate license from the CCC to test “retail cannabis,” regardless of the fact that many plants are from the same batch. Labs will also be audited to confirm everyone working there has the proper accreditations and a flawless past.

At this point, no one really knows when we will see a thriving retail cannabis industry. It’s hard to predict whether the rushed Band-Aid fixes to a battered industry are strong enough to hold it together -- or would it be simpler to abandon the current model and start fresh?

Gregg Padula is an employee of GateHouse Media New England. He has experience in several areas of the cannabis industry, and now serves as an advocate for both patients' and workers’ rights. He can be reached at gpadula@wickedlocal.com.